Every once in a while, you read a book that rattles around in your chest, disrupting all the dust, rearranging the furniture, pulling out old forgotten things from the closets of your insides - and it says "I live here; this is mine." The Scapegracers was that book.

Sideways is significantly more badass (and gayer) than I was at her age, but I saw so much of myself in her. In her fierceness, in her loneliness, in her juxtaposed desire for / fear of being loved and wanted and known. And Jing and Yates and Daisy ripped free of the page, Jing and Daisy all teeth and claws while Yates was the soft but firm supporting hand.

The voice on the page, Sideways' voice, felt like I had opened my own mouth and said whatever came out. The book felt like it was reading my mind. But make it witchier. And boy was it witchy. Magic that feels like magic ought to - unpredictable, lawless, powered by intention and the nebulous space where the desires of multiple people align.

There were a few things that made me falter along the way. A bit of an infodump chapter about Sideways' childhood in the middle. A very short conflict that is intense and traumatic but quickly moved past - or so we thought. And the realization that there wasn't a single arc to lead us through the book, but everything came together rather brilliantly and unexpectedly by the end and I was sold.

I need the next book now, please.